Poxwell

Cairn circle

Poxwell (Monument No. 454407) (Cairn circle) on The Modern Antiquarian, the UK & Ireland's most popular megalithic community website. 6 images, 3 fieldnotes, plus information on many more ancient sites nearby and across the UK & Ireland.

Images (click to view fullsize)

Fieldnotes

'A ridge of land with precariously steep sides. Valleys either side and other ridges parallel. An elongated slightly raised earth area with a ring of stones atop. Most just above the height of the grass but just-about a complete circle/oval. One side taller, hairy (with lychen) stones, the tallest perhaps 2' tall rising to a tip. All appear to be craggy flint stone.
At one end of the raised area, just below the rising earth, 3 large stones, as tho an entrance-way.
Along the middle of the ridge, perhaps 40' from the circle, potential and faint remains of a long narrow earthwork, perhaps only the remains of a hedge or wall, but two large stones (one broken in two, it seems) some distance apart. Around the further one (the broken one) a number of small stones.
A good view thru a gap in adjacent ridges to the sea. We can't see anything more thru the mist today, tho that began to clear just as we left, everything so much crisper after I'd taken my photographs and we're moving on.

Travelling north on the A353 toward Poxwell, there's parking space beside the footpath on the right hand side of the road. Walk a little way up the path and the sites just off to the left away from the path up over the lip of the ridge'

[visited 24/12/02] This is a wonderfully located Cairn Circle on a hilltop not far from the sea. A really peaceful place to while away a couple of hours in quiet contemplation. It is apparently the remains of a chambered round barrow and is a jagged looking circle in a small bank. Wellies are advisable if its been raining as mud rules for most of the walk to the site.

On the way there you walk past a disused quarry with some very interesting looking large rocks lying in front of it. Quarry debris, field clearance or the remains of another monument? you decide :)

Miscellaneous

(SY 74528358) Cairn Circle (NR) (1)
Round Barrow (SY 74518357) situated on crest of E-W limestone ridge just under 400 ft Turf-covered mound now oval, about 63ft E-W and 44 ft N-S with almost flat top, offset to E, about 2 ft. high. On E side of top, at probable approximate centre of an original circular mound, is exposed a continuous ring of stones, 14ft. in diam. The stones are a 'recrystallised variety of sarsen's On S. some stand up to 2 1/2 ft. high, while on N they are virtually flush with the surface. The spaces between all are packed with small limestone rubble. The four stones peripheral to mound on the W. seem more likely to be from this circle than to belong to an outer peristalith. No ditch is visible. A later boundary bank runs along N. side. (2,3) SY 74518357. A mound as described by RCHM (2), 18.0m. by 13.5m. On top of the mound, offset to the east end, is a circle of stones, diameter 5.0m., as described by RCHM (2).

This was visited in 1827 by one J.F.Pennie who thought this was a small stone circle of druidic origin. He painted a fanciful picture of rituals and solemn ceremonies, involving naked women and sacrifices. Pennie was not unusual in his assumption of a druidic origin to what he erroneously thought a stone circle instead of the remains of a barrow. The original barrow would have pre-dated the druids by about two thousand years.